Letters.

• Position: Letter to the Editor

Potions of Youth

Mock-starvation pills, cultured organ replacements, and sapphire vasculoids aside, it is evident even from Ronald Bailey's jovial, optimistic, go-for-it! summary of current longevity research ("ForeverYoung," August/September) that true near-immortality will come only when scientists figure out how to make our bodies stop producing free radicals.

That's like wishing for someone to figure out cold fusion. It's all very captivating, but there's no reason to be shouting that immortality is just around the bend. Scientists have to be optimistic if they are to win grants and investment money, but Bailey could stand to be a little less gullible.

What is interesting is his final rant regarding conservative arguments against longevity research. Bailey is right to laugh at pundits who say that life without death would not be life. Life is life, whether tempered by the knowledge of death (as with Homo sapiens) or not (as with other species, or so we think).

At the same time, the idea that awareness of our mortality causes us to be better people is worth serious consideration. Indeed, great philosophers have addressed this question in some depth.

Take the classical-modern philosopher Miguel de Unamuno. In The Tragic Sense of Life, he writes that "consciousness and finality are fundamentally the same thing." Could he be right? Could every moment of conscious thought be ordered by its ineluctable end? In fact, isn't that exactly how we experience life, as a series of finalities? What would immortality do to that? Would we recognize ourselves? Bailey acts like these are silly questions.

Unamuno says that we should all run out into the streets crying about our mortality, that death is what makes us love one another. What if he's right, and without death we would all be insufferable, like the sadistic Greek gods from Star Trek? What then?

I'm not against radical longevity; let the future take care of itself, I say. Let science do its thing; it will anyway, whether or not U.S. presidents and senators endorse it. But let's not be too quick to worship the God of Technology, until we know its fruits.

Anchorage, AK

April Susky

In "Forever Young," I read once again the idea that severe calorie restriction can extend human life spans. And once again I did not read anything about the major downside to severe calorie restrictions--and I don't mean hunger pangs!

Eating less than two-thirds of the normal baseline calorie requirements produces a number of effects in humans. The first, of course, is weight loss. But you don't just lose fat, you lose lean body mass.

Weight loss slows as the metabolism adapts to continued energy deficiencies. The decrease in metabolism results in hypothyroidism. So people who severely restrict their calories may live longer, but they will suffer from weakness...